My friend Peter Quantrill recently took his eight year old son Alfred to his first first-class cricket match – at Lord’s no less. A success, he tells me.
It brought to mind my own first visit to that hallowed
ground. I was nineteen or twenty, recently moved from small-town Nuneaton to
London, invited by a school friend, Roger Guedalla. Privileged, we sat among
the Members in the Pavilion.
The Gentlemen were playing the Players (don’t ask), and
around noon that most elegant and powerful of batsmen, Ted Dexter, had scored thirty odd
when he edged one to slip.
Irritated by his lack of concentration, an old codger among
the Members growled to his neighbour, ‘Wally Hammond would have taken them to
tea.’
The great Hammond had first played in that match in 1927.
Posts
